Question

The Warburg effect refers to the seemingly paradoxical preference for glycolysis over oxidative phosphorylation in many cancer tissues. After reading the incomplete statement shown below that reflects this paradox, fill in the blanks with appropriate numbers of ATP molecules and explain how you came up with the numbers by identifying glycolytic reactions that are key consuming or generating ATP.

“Glycolysis consumes __ ATP (per one glucose molecule) early in the pathway, produces __ ATP later, and the net of ___ ATP per glucose is significantly less than 26-28 ATPs produced by oxidative phosphorylation.”